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Front Page Titles (by Subject) CONFESSION ON THE EUCHARIST, DELIVERED TO THE DELEGATES AT OXFORD, IN 1382. a - Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe
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CONFESSION ON THE EUCHARIST, DELIVERED TO THE DELEGATES AT OXFORD, IN 1382. a - John Wyclife, Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe [1845]Edition used:Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe, D.D. with Selections and Translations from his Manuscripts , and Latin Works. Edited for The Wycliffe Society, with an Introductory Memoir, by the Rev. Robert Vaughan, D.D. (London: Blackburn and Pardon, 1845).
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CONFESSION ON THE EUCHARIST,
We believe, as Christ and his apostles have taught us, that the sacrament of the alter, white and rande, and like to our bread or host unsacred is very God’s body in form of bread, and if it be broken in three parties, as the church uses, or else in a thousand, every one of these parties is the same God’s body, and rythb so as the person of Christ is very God and very man, very Godhead, and very manhead, ryth so as holy kirke many hundred winters has trowyde,c the same sacrament is very God’s body, and very bread; as it is form of God’s body, and form of bread, as teacheth Christ and his apostles. And therefore Saint Paul nameth it never, but when he calls it bread, and he by our belief took his wit of God in this: and the argument of hereties against this sentence, is easy to a Christian man to assolve. And right as it is heresy to believe that Christ is a spirit and no body, so it is heresy for to trowe that this sacrament is God’s body, and no bread; for it is both together. But the most heresy that God suffered to come to his kyrke is to trowe that this sacrament is an accident without a substance, and may on no wise be God’s body: for Christ said by witness of John that “This bread is my body.” And if they say that be this skylle that holy kyrke had been in heresy many hundred winters, so it is specially since the fiend was loosed that was bewitnessed of the angel to John Evangelist after a thousand winters that Christ was ascended to heaven. But it is to suppose that many saints that died in the mean time before their death were pured of this error. Oh how great diversity is between us that trowes that this sacrament is very bread in its kind, and between heretics that tell us that this is an accident without a subject! For before that the fiend, the father of lesyngesa was loosened, was never this gabbyingb contrived. And how great diversity is between us that trowes that this sacrament that in its kind it is very bread, and sacramentally God’s body, and between heretics that trowes and tells that this sacrament may on none wise be God’s body! For I dare surely say that if this were truth, Christ and his saints died heretics, and the more part of holy kyrke believeth now heresy, and therefore devout men supposed that this council of friars in London, was with the herydene.c For they put an heresy upon Christ and saints in heaven, wherefore the earth trembled. In truth, landman’s voice answered for God as it did in time of his passion, when he was dampnyde to bodily death. Christ and his modur that in ground had destroyed all heresies, keep his kyrke in right belief of this sacrament, and move the king and his realm to ask sharply of his clerks this office that all his possessioners, on pain of losing all their temporalities, tell the king and his realm with sufficient grounding what is this sacrament; and all the orders of friars on pain of losing their allegiance tell the king and his realm with good grounding what is the sacrament: for I am certain of the thridde part of clergy that defends these doubts that is here said, that they will defend it on pain of their life. london blackburn and pardon printers hatton garden [a]Knighton de Event. Angl. apud X. Scriptores, Coll. 2649, 2650. [b]right. [c]believed. [a]lies. [b]gabbing. [c]earthquake. |

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